“Everyone’s on a journey,” Dianna Hill used to remind me gently whenever I got upset with what someone did or didn’t do. Maybe 5’2” in heels and just barely topping 100 pounds, Dianna had the look and soft voice of the perfect kindergarten teacher. She taught 8th-grade algebra.
Dianna was empathy personified. She could feel the “journey” of other people, even the ones she didn’t like. She honored their experience, even if she didn’t agree with them.
Dianna was my friend and assistant. She handled all the details of our No Place To Go Project live events with calm competence. On our video shoots in the field, she hauled equipment, operated a camera, and used her sweet, wry humor to put interviewees at ease.
She sometimes cried as we recorded interviews of people experiencing homelessness. She’d been there herself on her journey through life.
A 14-year-old runaway and kicked out of high school for being pregnant, Dianna was the mother of three children, first woman on a Placer County survey crew, self-taught coach of a boys’ basketball team, first in her family to go to college (Sierra and Sacramento State), middle-school math teacher, and the popular, former owner of the Crazy Horse Saloon in Nevada City.
Dianna Marie Hill’s journey ended November 26, 2025. The day before Thanksgiving. She was 67. We will have a celebration of her life in April with the three things she loved most: good music, good food and good friends.
Grandstand
I’m sure Dianna would have told me that Planning Commissioner Terry McAteer was on his journey.
I think he took a wrong turn at the Nov. 13 Nevada County Planning Commission public hearing on the Alternative/RV Housing Ordinance when he voted no. (A video of the complete hearing is available on YouTube.)
Clearly, McAteer’s mind was made up going into the meeting. His line of questioning to county staff parroted the arguments of ordinance opponents.
McAteer justified his no vote on the cost of complying with the ordinance and the alleged lack of enforcement by Code Compliance. Commissioner Steve French played yes-man to McAteer.
McAteer chose to ignore admonishments from Commission Chair Danny Milman and Housing Director Tyler Barrington that the Planning Commission’s charge was to decide about land use, not Code Compliance or cost.
He claimed the cost of the ordinance, “Invites people to run end on it.”
Planning Director Brian Foss told McAteer earlier in the hearing that people already skirt the law. He also said the permitting costs and building requirements were in line with the fees and conditions imposed on tiny homes on wheels and ADUs.
Milman noted that compared to the cost of building an ADU (accessory dwelling unit), putting in a pad with RV hookups and buying a trailer was several hundred thousand dollars less expensive than an ADU.
“I think that this is a good option to have,” she said.
“This problem isn’t going to get better by us not passing this ordinance,” Commissioner Jo Garst observed. “I don’t see an approval of this ordinance as causing a bigger problem than we already have.”
Commissioners Milman, Garst and John Foley agreed that passing the ordinance would give some people a relatively low-cost pathway to legal housing that doesn’t exist now.
They also concurred that cost and code enforcement were issues the Board of Supervisors should urgently address.
They voted yes to approve the Alternative/RV Housing Ordinance as an appropriate land use. McAteer and French voted no because of the non-land use issues of cost and code enforcement.
McAteer said he was making a “statement” and claimed that he cared about unhoused people.
Really? Apparently, not enough to vote for housing for them. Good luck on your journey, Mr. McAteer.
Longest night
Too many people’s journeys end up in the mean streets of homelessness. Even if they get out of it, they are scarred for life, often dying early of physical or psychological injuries or diseases.
Called The Longest Night, the National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day is commemorated on or about the winter solstice. It is a day to remember the journeys of all those people who died homeless or died because of their homeless experience.
In Nevada County, we will honor the memory of deceased family and friends this Friday evening. Starting at 4 p.m., members of SPIRIT Peer Empowerment Center, Hospitality House, No Place To Go Project, and other nonprofits and faith communities serving our homeless will set out 500 luminaria – electric votive candles in paper bags – between Utah’s Place and the new Commons Resource Center on Sutton Way in Grass Valley.
If the weather is too bad, we will light up the Resource Center.
I will honor the lives and deaths of three people whose homeless experience affected my life.
Monte Cazazza was a fierce advocate of social justice for Nevada City’s homeless population. During extreme weather events, he went to the camps to tell people to come to Sierra Roots’ warming shelter. At age 74, Monte took his own life in June 2023.
Vadi Zaitzev was a classically trained pianist and guitarist from the Soviet Union. Homeless by choice, Vadi was loved in our homeless community for his musical genius and warm, loving personality. His heart gave out during the killer heat wave of July 2024. He was 63.
After she lost her business and her house in the hostile takeover of the Crazy Horse by an ill-fated yogurt shop, Dianna Hill was never the same. Gone was her intrepid spirit.
She drifted in and out of homelessness, wracked by the depression and anxiety that she believed caused the cancer that killed her. She did find some joy in her last years helping to tell the journeys of homeless people.
These three unique individuals each contributed in their own way to the No Place To Go Project’s mission to put the welfare of people over politics.
Tom Durkin is the executive director of the No Place To Go Project, a nonprofit organization using the creative arts to advocate social justice for at-risk and homeless people. Donations are tax-deductible and gratefully appreciated. Durkin may be contacted at www.noplacetogoproject.org.